For about a month now I've been walking around to the hook, "my life was never Eazy!" It's a rap song, sorry I got distracted but I just thought you should know I listened to that song 3,000 times while writing this article.
If you find yourself wondering, "what should I post on LinkedIn every day? You're not alone.
Thousands of professionals are facing the content issue on a daily. It's an exciting topic because social relevance's significance and pressure are more prevalent than ever before. I happen to believe that we overthink what to post as the answer is right there in front of us, staring us in the face. It's not something you pull out of thin air either. It's much more methodical than that. No, the answer to this question is a collaborative effort, and it's not even close to as difficult as you think it is. Content is Eazy.
I'm picking up a lot of chatter across the wire about the significance of posting content on LinkedIn. Apparently, it's a big deal to have a personal brand these days. Side note, it is, but that's not what I'm talking about here, so before I get into it, let me ask you a question, can you relate to these scenarios?
Are you in Marketing?
Your career and likely your life revolves around conversions. Whatever it is and wherever it is, it's all about taking the casual visitor to more of a steady visitor to finally popping the question (Will you go out with me?). In other words, your boss is telling you to not only promote content that supports the business needs, but you're also in charge of creating EVERYTHING that comes along with that task. Create the content, optimize the content, promote the content, track the data, make adjustments, start over. Sorry, I forgot to mention, "pray that it goes well."
But what really happens in marketing? You start your day in meetings piling on new tasks being presented to you and waiting for your colleagues to clock out and your kids to go to bed before you can start the process of actually DOING THE WORK that needs to get done.
I think this is an excellent time to remind you that you signed up for marketing. It's so fun bringing in all the leads only NOT to get any commission.
Are you in sales?
You need to hybrid sell now (by the way, that's not a real thing, it's just called selling). Thanks, Covid! But, what is hybrid selling? Never mind, basically start a personal brand, post content, connect with everyone and send a message asking everyone to meet with you even though you know it's sleazy. It doesn't matter because you don't know any other way or why you're doing it in the first place. All you know is you need meetings to find opportunities, and it would be best if you had those opportunities to get new clients.
Regardless, you find yourself creating content or sharing your company's content as a means of checking the box just to say you accomplished something. Only you end up discouraged because, ultimately, nothing happens other than getting approached by some financial advisor, insurance agent, or worse, someone like me—a consultant. So, what do you do? You end up quitting. Or, more than likely, start selling others on the idea that the "old school" ways of sales were a better way, but what you failed to realize is that you're wrong. Very wrong.
You have to read this part if you're in sales or marketing. Sorry, you do.
You both undoubtedly have shared interests in each other's success. There is no denying that. That's why it blows my mind that the two of you don't start working together right now! Seriously, your marketing efforts produce middle-of-the-funnel (at best) content that generates awareness, but engagement is next to nil. Most of the time, it's BOFU (bottom of the funnel), and we all know that's very specific and often way too overplayed in the grand scheme of a successful funnel.
Your content (if original) is bland and unreadable and, to your audience, is perceived as white noise on a tv screen. It's just putting me to sleep thinking about it. So here's the solution.
Close that frickin loop
Sales teams, stop acting like your marketing team doesn't know your customers. They do, even though they say things that imply they've never had a single conversation with a client because they haven't. It's on you to give them feedback so, consider it your fault if they need some pointers.
Marketers, stop pretending to know everything about conversions and that your sales team needs to share your content because they don't.
Start meeting once a week to discuss what clients say they want or their problems. Do this for both prospects and existing clients and come to the table to discuss. You will find the answer to your content lies within that detailed feedback.
Post the same content, differently
Marketing, whatever it is that the business needs or what your clients need, continue sharing content from the middle & bottom of the funnel except for this time, when your sales team finds an opportunity, help them by creating specific marketing content designed precisely for the lead.
Sales teams congratulations, you now have free reign to get creative with top-of-the-funnel content. Only now can you start asking for input from others (this is going to be sweet). Post something engaging with your audience about a specific topic. Make it bold, make it personal, make it relative (pop culture and current events always work), and create a call to action. The CTA could be a question, it could be a link, and it could also be a personalized hashtag. The content doesn't even need to be related to what you do. Ok, maybe loosely related or at least implied. As a result, the engagement you start to encounter will mix perfectly with the middle and bottom of the funnel content your marketing team created to support the engagement and foster connections.
Start Converting together
Sales teams need to start acting more like marketing, creating content to appease a wider audience. Marketing needs to start working more like a traditional salesperson with a one-to-one approach for a higher conversion rate. This approach is the new sales behavior. Consider it a replacement for the old-fashioned cold call or shitty cut & pasted message. The best way to split up the funnel and communicate over the process is to split up the funnel from top to bottom.
Why? There could be several reasons. Maybe, your company is stringent or has a corporate culture that doesn't have the freedom to express themselves the same way a salesperson can (salespeople can always get away with things marketers can't). Perhaps, your marketing team doesn't have the bandwidth to start a new content approach with the amount they have in the backlog, or it could be that it's time we all start realizing that the way we add value, the way we go to market, and the way we sell HAS CHANGED, and we stop pretending like it hasn't.
Here's a quick overview in lamens terms:
- The company has an objective to sell more of something they offer
- The marketing department creates content such as blogs, whitepapers, podcasts, videos that generate consideration & conversion primarily.
- Marketing sets up a weekly meeting to close the loop with sales.
- Sales disclose what they are hearing from current & prospective clients.
- Marketing shares the overall content strategy with the sales team and asks them to create content that supports the overall message.
- The sales team creates very engaging content or generates awareness for a specific issue and promotes their personal brand.
- The marketing team takes feedback from the sales team to create more middle and bottom of the funnel content to help with conversions.
- Do it all over again every week.
You don't have to pray. I mean, it helps, but if you do this, it's not as necessary as it once was. Actually, you know what? Take that back. Pray and pray often.
I'm the Chief Disruptur for Disruptur, and although I would like to claim this process as disruptive, it's not that disruptive. Unless, of course, it's a process unlike anything your company has ever done, and in that case, I guess it is.
Now, you didn't hear this from me, but your sales team can communicate with marketing which prospects are engaging more. Now, your marketing team can start to retarget those specific companies with content that has a higher conversion rate, possibly even personalize the content while they're at it.
Now, imagine this approach at scale. Hundreds and hundreds of pieces of content tied back to your company from your employees and fans—all linking back to your company and creating even more awareness for what you offer and how you help.
This approach to social & content is how sales and marketing teams need to function socially in 2022. I'll shut up now.
Oh yeah, please don't call this "smarketing" or integrated sales & marketing either-this is just how it works now.
Call me,
#beadisruptur
